Egyptians are known for their extensive and detailed record keeping. They have recorded all aspects of Egyptian lives from agriculture and harvest to the lives and death of their kings. They have left about 3000 years of written and pictorial history. Why is it that such a culture had forgotten to keep record of their great accomplishment, which is in fact a marvelous feat of human engineering? Why is it that they decided to leave the pyramids empty and bare?

It’s the egoistic human nature to take credit for one’s accomplishments especially when the achievement is historic. Is it that the pyramid builders were so humble that they decided not to take any credit for their accomplishment? If they were so humble, they would not even have built the pyramids in the first place, spending so much money and human labor to bury their dead.

The best way to teach is to inspire people to have their own questions and seek its answer. Are the pyramids a puzzle that had been laid down before us that we are yet to realize; like a Rubik’s cube in front of a pig? How much longer will we be preoccupied with our ideas that will prevent us from seeing the truth about the pyramids?

The Great Pyramids According to Us

Barely 500 years out of the stone-age, in the bronze-age, a civilization had mastered mathematics, astronomy, architecture and many other sciences. They have decided to undertake massive constructions projects for the burial of their dead kings. With bronze tools they cut lime stones and granites; with no knowledge of wheel, pulley and most other construction equipments that we use today; with the help of a hundred thousand slaves in about 20 years they have constructed a structure that had withstood the test of time. The structures that weigh millions of tons had stood firm for centuries without sinking into soil and crumbling despite several earthquakes. Remember, according to us this all happened thousand years before the simple wheel was invented.

According to the accounts of the ancient Greek historian Herodotus who lived in the 5th century BC, the construction of the great pyramid were completed in 20 years by some 100,000 men who were replaced every three months. The Egyptians are said to have accomplished these by moving huge stones from a quarry and dragging and lifting them into place with just livers, rollers and inclined plains in around 2500 BC, during the fourth dynasty Egyptian pharaoh.

What The Great Pyramids Are Not (Pyramid Paradox)

The pyramids are largely believed to be the burial place and the monuments of the pharos of Egypt. It’s true that many mummified bodies of many pharoses had been excavated from many ruined pyramids. The largest of the pyramids (at the Giza complex) is attributed to the great king Khufu. However no remains of any pharos had ever been found in the 3 great pyramids at the Giza complex. Historians claim that they have been robed out of their content.

The reason for the pyramid of Khufu being attributed to King Khufu is the discovery of hieroglyphic graffiti (the royal seal and name) above the sealing of the burial chamber found only in 1837. But not only was the kings name misspelled (Rhufu instead of Khufu) but also it was found out to be a forgery by J.R. Hill.

The pyramids to modern man is a messy pile of stones. In fact the pyramids were covered with about 115,000 enormous lime stones that were smooth and polished to 1/100 of an inch such that not even a blade can be slid into the crevasses between the stones. When the great pyramids were completed, the surface of the pyramid presented an immaculate, even, plane and steep surface with no entrances and no possibility to climb up. The white Tura stone, the builders had chosen for the outer stones must have been dazzling. To produce this visual impact, the surface of the pyramid had to be unblemished, seamless and very smooth. In AD 1300, a massive earthquake loosened many of the outer casing stones, which were then carted away by Bahri Sultan An-Nasir Nasir-ad-Din al-Hasan in 1356 to build mosques and fortresses in nearby Cairo. The original pyramids of Giza could be seen shining from hundreds of miles away.

Pyramid Construction Challenge

Basic Math

The pyramids were made of about 2.5 million (2,500,000 stones) stones that weigh 2.5 tones (2500 kg) on average. Some of the granite stones up in the pyramids even weigh up to 80 tons and were drought from quarries hundreds of miles away. Remember that this was about thousand years before the wheel was invented. Placing two and a half million stones in place within 20 years would require one stone put in place every 2 minutes or so, 365 days a year. This includes quarrying, moving and placing the stones with precision.

Ramp Theory

According to the ramp theory, experts say that for the construction of the pyramid it must have required a ramp that was about 1 mile lone and the construction of the ramp alone would have been a daunting challenge by itself. It would have required more materials and labor to construct the ramp than the actual pyramid. After the construction of the pyramid the dismantling and disposing of the ramp would have been another challenge. So ramp theory although looks like a good idea, is impractical.

Roller Theory

The heavy stones are believed to be brought from the quarries by placed them over wooden logs and rolling them. At first gaze it seems practical but when you take into account the weight of the stones and the sheer number of them; it’s impractical. To move the 2.5 million stones it would have required cutting down 25 million trees. The main trees found in Egypt are date palms. That being a source of food would have not been cut down. Where in the desert would you find so many trees? If in fact the trees were used, the sheer mass of the stones would have grinded the logs to pulp in a couple of dozen meters.

Pyramids and Astronomical Alignments

All ancient civilizations were quiet obsessed by the stars and planets. They somehow knew how to observe these heavenly bodies and track their moments. Egyptians were no exception. They believed that their gods came from the stars and that on death they will return to the stars. Robert Bauval, a construction engineer by profession found that there exist a co-relation between certain star constellations and the pyramids of Giza. He observed that the three pyramids of Giza are in correlation with the belt stars of Orion and their sizes were in proportion to that of the three stars. He found that the two Southern shafts pointed at the belt of Orion constellation and the Sirius star while the Northern ones pointed at the circumpolar stars. The shafts and the stars aligned perfectly around the period 2500BC; the time that we refer to as the pyramid age. The constellation of Orion represents the Egyptian god Osiris. The Egyptian myth tells that Osiris had a beginning which means Orion had a beginning. Further winding the sky to about 10500BC show that the pattern the Orion belt stars make with the Milky Way exactly matches with the pattern the pyramids make with the river Nile. Now if you go to the east of the pyramids at that same time you would find the sun rising at the spring equinox in direct alignment with the Sphinx. Are the pyramids actually much older than we previously thought?

Real Builders?

Human history is a mystery with can only be traced back to myths. Our simple human mind can only come up with simple ideas and explanations. We are yet to uncover the truth behind the construction and the purpose of the Pyramids. It’s for certain that this is not an accomplishment of a quasi-stone-age civilization. The modern human civilization is mealy reaching a position where we can accomplish such feat of construction or at the very least understand them. Probably when we are able to answer the questions “Who build the pyramids?” and “Why they build them?” we might have a better understanding about the human race itself. All I can say is that our paradigm is awaiting a giant leap which is coming sooner or later, and is inevitable.